Title Released in November 2023 Becomes The Most Played in Franchise History
20th February, 2024 – Shattering its own records and catapulting the games into a new realm of success and innovation, more players than ever before have created their own footballing realities in Football Manager 2024, now the most-played title in the series’ history.
The 20th release in Sports Interactive™’s and SEGA®’s iconic franchise has recorded its seven-millionth player, breaking the previous record of 6.88 million players set by Football Manager™ 2023.
The previous total was achieved across FM23’s entire lifecycle. FM24 (Football Manager™ 2024) broke that record in less than 100 days following its worldwide release on November 6th, 2023.
FM24 was also the most pre-purchased title in series history, with fans responding with incredible fervour to the most complete edition of FM to date.
FM24’s reach and appeal has been bolstered by its official debut in Japan and first launch on Netflix Games, with learnings from FM23’s launch on Apple Arcade and PlayStation®5 also paying dividends with the players/community feedback going directly into improvements for both FM24’s Apple Arcade release and console releases including the GamePass version.
Sports Interactive Studio Director Miles Jacobson said: “Reaching this milestone of seven million players in barely three months gives me and everyone at the studio enormous pride.
“Knowing that this record was coming has allowed me to reflect on where we’ve come from and where we’ve got to as a studio – and we’ve come a long way. From a game originally made for fun by Paul and Ov Collyer in their Shropshire bedroom, to a studio pursued and purchased by SEGA, and now being embedded in the world of football and being partnered with some of the globe’s biggest clubs, competitions and brands – riding out all the ups and downs in the industry along the way – is truly mind blowing.”
“We’ve gone through three distinct phases in the studio’s life, growing in size and reach, but a lot of things haven’t changed throughout that time. One is the reason we make games. People work very hard to earn the money to buy our games, often in jobs they don’t like and we provide their escape. We, as we did when I first got involved 30 years ago back in 1994, want to make the best value for money games on the planet and provide people with a world where they can tell create football stories and live out their dreams.
“Making Football Manager more accessible – not just more accessible to play but accessible to more people – has been an eight-year journey that we’re still on. That’s meant adding language support in new territories, most notably in Japan, China and Korea with the end result being that Asia now makes up 20% of our audience. It’s meant different versions of the game for different audiences and we’ve also embraced third-party subscription platforms in a way that no other studio has.
“Our incredible growth in player numbers over the last few years, from celebrating two million players in 2020 to seven million in 2024, shows that not only has our strategy been working but also that as a studio, we’ve improved and grown across all disciplines. A team is all of its parts and I’m very proud, and very lucky, to get to lead such an amazing team whose talent and hard work has made our goals and aspirations a reality… and to have an incredible community of players that we first started talking to directly in the internet’s infancy in
the early 90s.
“The hard work doesn’t stop here, though. There’s a lot more to come from us over the next few years, starting with FM25 and all that means with the move to Unity and introduction of Women’s Football. We’ve been releasing games for 33 years but what we’re doing now is setting things up for the next 30, where we expect to continue to innovate for decades to come.”